Euripides is quoted as saying,
”
Better a serpent than a stepmother!
”
Why is the villain in common fairy tales and folklore a
”
wicked
”
stepmother? For generations she has been demonized.
Euripides is quoted as saying, “Better a serpent than a stepmother!” Why is the villain in common fairy tales and folklore a “wicked” stepmother? For generations she has been demonized.
Is it a biological instinct, just as a mother bird will shove a foreign hatchling out of her nest? If a young mammal is orphaned, it only has one chance for a surrogate mother when it’s very young. If you wait too long, the mother knows it isn’t her offspring. She feels no obligation to feed it and will even injure or kill it.
I would guess this is a very strong biological instinct, and even though we’re a vastly superior being than your standard dairy cow, maybe we carry a similar instinct deep within. Perhaps we choose to disregard and/or bury the idea of rejecting another woman’s child simply because we can think and rationalize.
I borrowed the definition of “step” from an online source: “Step: related by marriage rather than blood. Step is also associated with bereavement or loss, and in reference to stepmothers, it takes on several different meanings: such as one step removed, second best, or stepping into someone else’s shoes.”
The explanation clearly doesn’t define the stepmother as being evil or wicked. This comes from the ancient Greeks and Romans, who assumed that this personification was a natural consequence of her new marriage.
They believed it originated with jealousy. As the story goes, a man would remarry a woman who is much younger. She is often times closer in age to her stepchildren than her husband. In ancient times, it was not uncommon for the stepmother to have amorous feelings for her stepson. When he would reject her advances she would be bitter and outraged, thus sparking her evil tendencies and “wicked” behavior.
An alternative plot in these stories is that the new stepmother is jealous that her husband’s inheritance will be left to his son. In such instances, the stepmother is portrayed to be wicked and greedy as she plots his death.
I’ve been contemplating the “son inheriting the money” scenario, and I’ve considered that perhaps a stepmother became known as “wicked” by a spoiled and unruly stepson. Imagine that when she tries to enforce unpopular rules, he refuses to cooperate while uttering those dreaded words, “You are not my mother.”
He threatens to leave her penniless upon receiving his inheritance if she refuses to allow him his way, thus reversing control of the household. With this kind of leverage, he could portray her as a very wicked woman and defend his decision to leave her with nothing without appearing to be cruel-hearted.
If he is pointing the finger and calling her greedy, maybe it’s like they say today – “when you have your finger pointed at someone, there are three more pointing back at you.”
Another commonly written scenario was that of a stepmother who was less beautiful than the daughter of her new husband, such as in “Snow White.” Her jealousy raged when she would see her husband doting on his beautiful daughter, and again, her wicked ways would prevail.
These circumstances were evidently a common enough occurrence to have her typecast as a “wicked stepmother” in a number of children’s stories centuries later.
“Hansel and Gretel”, “Cinderella” and “Snow White” all faced the consequences of their wicked stepmother. In a biological household, this is just a bedtime story, but for those of us who are assigned this title on our wedding day, it’s more like a horror story.
A stepmother already has the great task before her of managing her new household and blending two families. In addition, she also has her new stepchildren preconditioned by society to assume the word “wicked” naturally precedes “stepmother” before any problem actually arises.
In our culture, the very first examples of literature we expose our children to are tales of wicked stepmothers. We speak her lines with a witch-like voice to enhance her maliciousness, and we cuddle the children closer as we turn the page to see what treacherous thing she’ll do next.
It’s no wonder we grow up envisioning the word “wicked” when we think of stepmothers and how easily it glides off the tongue.
Whether the origin of the wicked stepmother is folklore or biological instinct, I’m counting on the kind of happily ever after that doesn’t involve me eating a poisoned apple!
Lydia Eden-Irwin and her husband were both raised in Gilroy. They have three kids collectively and have spent the past four years meeting the challenges of blending two broken households into one great family. Lydia can be reached at
ed*****@ao*.com
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